With its “Blood Donor BIOBANK”, the Bavarian Red Cross (BRK) Blood Donor Service offers a unique and innovative resource for biomarker research: the world’s first blood donor based biobank. Biobanks as collections of biological material together with associated medical data open new possibilities for the development of new targeted diagnostics and therapies. The BRK Blood Donor Service maintains a unique collection of over 3 million blood samples, making it one of the largest sample collections worldwide. Every working day 2,000 new samples are added to the collection.

The German National Cohort (NAKO) has been inviting men and women aged between 20 and 69 to 18 study centers throughout Germany since 2014. The participants are medically examined and questioned about their living conditions. The GNC’s aim is to investigate the causes of chronic diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, rheumatism, infectious diseases, and dementia in order to improve prevention, early diagnoses and treatment of these very widely spread diseases.